Here’s the opening paragraph of an op-ed piece in today’s Washington Post:

Americans should look carefully at the anti-politician, anti-government mood exhibited in California this week. Just as Proposition 13 and the anti-tax movement of 1978 were the forerunners of the Reagan presidential victory, so the results of Tuesday’s vote are a harbinger of things to come.

The complete piece is here. The author is Newt Gingrich.

The column ends on a note I consider extremely hopeful, though it fails completely in a most important way.  The future cannot be built on a platform of “anti”. We have to get past the anti-tax, anti-government, anti-politician sentiments of the moment. Anger motivates, but is not enough to build a movement and bring real change.

If people are serious about shrinking government, disciplining elected officials, and taking our government back from the special interests – the stated goals of Gingrich and so many others – they ought to endorse income security for all.

A few sentences from Gingrich’s column illustrate the anger:

“The states with huge government machines … have become castles of corruption, favoritism and wastefulness.”

“Elections have become so rigged by big money and clever incumbents that the process of self-government is threatened.”

“The special interests that own the legislators in both parties have been exploiting New York for two generations.”

“Watch the arrogance of the elites in Washington as they impose their costs and special deals on the American people.”

And here’s the final paragraph:

In the great tradition of political movements rising against arrogant, corrupt elites, there will soon be a party of people rooting out the party of government. This party may be Republican; it may be Democratic; in some states it may be a third party. The politicians have been warned.

That new or renewed party will be built on a promise of income security for all. That’s the only platform sturdy enough. The basic ideas are on the home page of this web site, IncomeSecurityForAll.org.

The complete proposal, the benefits, and the plan to make it happen is in my book, Peaceful, Positive Revolution,.

Think about it: We can give every adult citizen a basic income of, say, $1,000 a month.

The amount should be enough so the poor and unemployed can afford food and shelter, at least. But we give it everyone, even Bill Gates and Oprah Winfrey, to create a baseline of economic justice and economic equality.

We pay for it by ending the bailouts and subsidies, and cutting government programs that become superfluous. With this basic income, which I call Citizen Dividends, there will no longer be any rationale for individual welfare or corporate welfare. We’ll be able to cut or eliminate hundreds of federal, state, and local government programs. Every citizen will have an income independent of those programs and independent of any job.

This is a platform that can appeal to Democrats and Republicans who sincerely want to take their parties back from the special interests. It can also appeal to Greens, Libertarians, and independent candidates who seek to overthrow the Democrats and Republicans.

This is actually not such a radical idea. Earlier versions of guaranteed income were mainstream ideas in the 1960s, supported by moderate Democrats and moderate Republicans, Martin Luther King Jr., and more than 1,200 economists from across the political spectrum. Earlier proposals for income security go back to Thomas Jefferson and Thomas Paine.

Please explore the web site, read the book, and help spread the word.

This will happen when enough of us demand it, when We the People demand it.

Steven Shafarman

It’s also International Worker’s day. That’s an official holiday in many countries, though mostly ignored for obvious political reasons in the United States. That ignorance is a good and important story – an 1886 protest by workers in Chicago, workers shot, a bomb thrown into a crowd of police, a riot, seven probably innocent people executed. Here are Wikipedia links for May Day and the Haymarket affair.

Chrysler is going to get another $10 billion of our taxpayer dollars, and our government is going to appoint people to the company’s board of directors. Fiat will get a large share of the company. Workers will be majority owners, with 55 percent of the stock, though that ownership takes the place of their pension funds, which were supposed to have been securely protected.

The company is saved, it seems, at least for now. But if the restructured company eventually fails, the workers will be in even more serious trouble. Workers today, and Americans generally, appear to be content with our lack of power – a stark contrast with the 1886 protests this day commemorates.

The complications and drama of the Chrysler situation, especially the huge taxpayer subsidies, have made it easy to ignore some fundamental questions. Is this actually good for ordinary Americans? Does this promote the general welfare? Why is our government investing so much time and money to save Chrysler? Does the stated rationale, to “save jobs,” really make sense?

All of these troubles could have been avoided if ordinary Americans had real political and economic power. That’s the main goal of Citizen Dividends, the guaranteed basic income. Give every American citizen some amount, say $1,000 a month. Every citizen – workers and the unemployed, poor and rich alike – will get the same amount, the same treatment. That’s how we can directly and efficiently promote the general welfare.

Everyone who’s unemployed will have some income. The amount should be enough that people with no other income can afford food and shelter. People will be able to manage while they find or create their own jobs. No more subsidies to Chrysler or other big corporations. No more bailouts to Wall Street.

Citizen Dividends will create a new baseline of economic justice and economic equality, and a new basis for political equality. That’s something the workers in 1886 would have understood and fought for.

That’s how we can have a Peaceful, Positive Revolution.

Steven Shafarman

Three recent articles discuss the need for or likelihood of some type of populist uprising. All are by university professors, writing for general readers.

The most substantive, here, was a New York Times opinion piece. It’s by Sudhir Venkatesh, a professor of sociology at Columbia University and the author of Gang Leader for a Day: A Rogue Sociologist Takes to the Streets.

Here’s something from Gary Olson, chairman of the political science department at Moravian College in Bethlehem. It was published in the Lehigh Valley Times and circulated widely on the web through CommonDreams.org.

Third is by Elizabeth Sanders, a professor of government at Cornell University. It was published by In These Times.
Three serious articles that I saw within just three days. Seems like a trend.

Why aren’t Americans even more angry? What will it to take to arouse, provoke, inspire, motivate people to act?

My answer: A clear compelling statement of an alternative to our current system.

My candidate for that role, of course, is income security for all.

Steven Shafarman